Holy Families: a new artwork needs your help #ivf #renaissance #photography #families #geekgirl

holy-families

Please help Deborah Kelly  find subjects for her photographic portrait series!
She is looking for families, queer and straight and otherwise compiled, whose children have been conceived with the assistance of any reproductive technologies, from turkey basters to IVF.

Participants will …be posed in beautiful and serious formal arrangements based on renaissance Holy Family paintings of disputed provenance.

The work will be exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane from April. All participating families will receive a signed, museum-quality artists’ proof of their portrait.

Deborah really needs your assistance, especially to find (any) families with little babies.

deborahkelly@iinet.net.au
until Friday, March 23, 2012 at 12:30am
Any city in Australia

“Barbielicious” LEGOs. Does LEGO design only for boys? Or does it sell stereotypes? #dontdumbdown #lego #geekgirl

space-rocket-lego

Iconic toy brand LEGO recently launched a new line of toys meant just for girls — but two young women, Bailey Shoemaker-Richards and Stephanie Cole, think the products are unfairly “dumbed down” for girls.

The new line is called LadyFigs, and it’s made up of busty, pastel-colored figurines that come with interests like shopping, hair-dressing, and lounging at the beach. The uninspired toys even come with pre-assembled environments — so there is no assembly (or imagination) required.

Bailey and Stephanie say they’re frustrated that LEGO is pushing outdated gender roles on girls and cheating them of the opportunity to build and discover. So they took to the internet, blogging about what they call the new “Barbielicious” LEGOs and petitioning the toy company to lose the sexist LadyFigs line and go back to empowering both boys and girls with its original products. Click here to sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

LEGO hasn’t always thought its toys were only for boys. In the 1980s, the company was actually celebrated for a major advertising campaign that spotlighted a young girl and her LEGO creation with the tagline “What it is is beautiful.” But since then, LEGO reversed course and decided to market its products only to boys.

The company claims its research shows girls just don’t appreciate the original LEGO line. But Bailey and Stephanie argue that with LEGO’s renewed emphasis on boys — featuring only boys in its ads and stocking products in the boys’ aisles of toy stores — it’s no wonder young girls wouldn’t think LEGOs were meant for them.

Bailey and Stephanie’s fight to get LEGO to return to its gender-neutral toys is already making waves, with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Time weighing in on the issue. But LEGO is stubbornly holding its ground and told Business Week that the LadyFigs launch is a “strategic” move to “reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children,” as if girls have never been part of LEGO’s focus.

Public pressure can prove LEGO wrong. If enough people sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition, it could convince LEGO that the new LadyFigs are bad business and the company should return its focus to empowering boys AND girls with toys that inspire creativity and innovation.

Tell LEGO to stop selling out girls — sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

Editor’s note: Not everyone agrees and there have been some pretty funky designs built by gurls & boys using the new vibrant brick colours.. (One used them to build a spaceship.) I think it’s a personal choice if you want to condemn LEGO for being driven by what their marketing department tells them what girls actually want. LEGO has tried to counter-act the bad press (even though it’s damage control, rather than genuine insight): and it never hurts to make them think about delivering product to a mixed market with several different goals and interests.GG xox

Mardi Grass Mind Candy #Nimbin #hippies #pot #maryjane #woohoo #geekgirl

Mardi Grass Mind Candy
Midday – 6pm Saturday 30 April
NIMBIN TOWN HALL

MCs: Miss Guidance, Neil Pike & JulianR
…
Join Pragmatic Visionaries & Solipsistic Psychonauts for an afternoon of Debate, Discussion & the Occasional Stoned Rave

Outrageous Truths & Believable Lies!

Mind candy? Afternoon distraction or hours of brain bending banter? You decide! This year the Nimbin Mardi Grass is playing host to a series of panel discussions to be held in the Town Hall from midday to 6pm on Saturday 30 April, focusing on the big issues: the legal, medical, spiritual, cultural & political aspects of plant life. For this reason we’ve assembled a cast of academics, intellectuals, professionals, politicians, public servants, activists, hippys, poets, career bullshit artists and just plain ol’ troublemakers to stir the pot (as it were).

Mardi Grass Mind Candy is excited to announce that Paul Cubitt, President of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition [LEAP] Australia will speak on our panel discussing policing choices. The panels will also feature international guest speaker, Dr Robert Melamede, CEO and President of Cannabis Science, Inc., as well as Australian drug law reform luminaries, Sandra Kanck, SA spokesperson for Families and Friends of Drug Law Reform, Prof Paul Wilson, Chair of Criminology, Bond University, and Dr Alex Wodak, President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation. A full listing of our other magnificent speakers appear in the program below.

Whilst we recognise the ultimate futility of spending too much time trying to talk about what is essentially a non-verbal experience (getting high), there’s also quite a few pot-related topics that do need some discussion:

Midday – 1pm
THE GREEN GODDESS
Entheogenic cultures can increase benefits and reduce risks, offering a different approach to Western-style legal regulation
FACILITATOR: Dr Des Tramacchi
PANELISTS: Greg Kasarik [Community of Infinite Colour], Frank Kirk, Dr Bob Melamede [Cannabis Science, Inc.]

1 – 2pm
POLICE FORCE OR POLICE SERVICE?
What is good policing? What choices do police have?
FACILITATOR: Prof Paul Wilson, Bond University
PANELISTS: Steve Bolt, Paul Cubitt [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition], Dr John Jiggens, Sandra Kanck [Families and Friends of Drug Law Reform], Dr Alex Wodak [Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation]

2 – 3pm
BONG ON AUSSIE, BONG ON ~ DID CANNABIS CULTURE GET DUMBED DOWN?
Is anyone still getting high or are we just getting wasted?
FACILITATOR: JulianR
PANELISTS: David Hallett, Greg Kasarik [Community of Infinite Colour], Frank Kirk, Dr Bob Melamede [Cannabis Science, Inc.], Neil Pike [Pagan Love Cult], Alan Salt [HEMP Embassy]

3 – 4pm
LEGISLATING FOR LEGOLAND?
How do we react to drug policy?
FACILITATOR: Erik van Keulen
PANELISTS: Stephanie Clerc [Happy High Herbs], Mulga, Jake Potkonyak, [Students for Sensible Drug Policy], Torsten Wiedemann [Koda Phytorium]

5 – 6pm
HOW TO LEGALIZE DRUGS?
How can we proact in the drug policy discourse?
FACILITATOR: Erik van Keulen
PANELISTS: Tony Bower [Mullaways Medical Cannabis Pty Ltd], Dr Graham Irvine, Sandra Kanck [Families and Friends of Drug Law Reform], Dr Andrew Katelaris, Joe King, Dr Alex Wodak [Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation]See More

Saturday, April 30 · 12:00pm – 6:00pm
(be there or be straight!)

Elusive Light exhibition #WA #wabi-sabi #arts #geekgirl

Elusive Light by Stephen Armitstead & Lia McKnight…Exploring many meanings of the word light, using objects, photography, video and sound.

Exhibition runs until 10 April 2011. Artist talk 2nd April.
Heathcote Museum & Gallery (Western Australia)

elusive-light

This exhibition of work by Lia McKnight and Stephen Armitstead is about turning glimpses into long looks. It is about finding beauty in the fragile and transitory, and then trying to hold it for long enough so everyone can see it. It is about revealing the contradictions between our aesthetic observations and their ultimate expression as art. At the heart of all art practice that gives form to ideas there are contradictions They are the intractable relationship of opposites that are at the centre of our attempts to unravel what we observe and then explain to the world.

Light is at the heart of this exhibition, but not the constant, steady illumination that we associate with naturalistic painting. In naturalism the assumption is that the world is stable and ordered and that art’s great task is to reveal that to us. Naturalism emphasises the solidity of objects, their permanence, and by implication, their authority; but as soon as one grasps the artful contradictory fiction of naturalism – for the world isn’t stable and permanent – we are free to explore other ways in which the complexities of the world can reveal themselves. This exhibition encourages us to look at the world differently, to appreciate the seemingly inconsequential and to gain pleasure in unravelling how we have learned to look. It is in this way that we can re-imagine how the world can be understood.

The artists have drawn widely on a set of experiences about ideas and materials that are contemporary, but a contradiction of art making is that the present can be understood by looking backwards over its shoulder at what happened in the past. A thousand years ago in China, the poet and critic Su Shi wryly observed the futility of trying to understand the value of art in terms of how it did or didn’t resemble the world.

For Su and others like him, the world had to be transformed by the artist through a work of art that revealed how the artist had been touched, physically and emotionally, by the world. This is a contradiction as big as naturalism’s but it gives us another perspective on how to understand how McKnight and Armitstead are working. McKnight has been drawn to the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi where beauty is found in the fragility and transience of the materials and the combination of hopefulness and sadness.

McLuhan Galaxy 2011 Understanding Media Today #Barcelona #geekgirl

Call for Papers :: Deadline 7 January 2011

The International Conference McLuhan Galaxy Barcelona 2011 Understanding Media,Today will be held in Barcelona 23 – 25 May 2011 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan. The aim is to bring together researchers, scholars and McLuhan Fellows to reflect on different aspects of McLuhan’s contribution. The conference in Barcelona will be networked to a series of conferences that are going to take place in Toronto, Berlin and Rome in other dates, to celebrate the 100 Anniversary of McLuhan.

This is an excellent opportunity not only to review McLuhan’s thought but also to update them in relation to contemporary questions centred in the digital forms of production, co-production and consumption of intelligence, memory, self, identity, desire, body, art, design, collaboration and technology in the society of knowledge. Authors are encouraged to submit previously unpublished papers/abstracts to the topics that are being addressed by the conference.

http://www.mcluhangalaxy.net/

Swags for the Homeless #Australia #homeless #gifts #geekgirl

Swag

 I was really impressed to see that finally some worthwhile effort, design, technology and thought had been put into something comfortable, portable and practicle for Homeless people.

With a compelling headline of cardboard box, cement … or dignified backpack. The Swag may yet take on .. and at least serve to create some temporary comfort zone.

The statistics for homeless people are staggering, and as we draw closer to the holiday season perhaps we can all spare buying those expensive and futile gifts and give to people who really need it.

I really love these swags.

#Melbourne. DUST & ILLUSIONS. A Burning Man #Film #geekgirl

Melbourne. DUST & ILLUSIONS. A Burning Man Film
 
More Info GET TICKETS now: ($18 presales, $20 door)
http://dustandillusions.com/blog/melbourne-screening-dec-15th-2010

Dusts & Illusions
A Documentary film by Olivier Bonin. Madnomad Films 2009
…
Exploring the deep origins of the annual BURNING MAN festival Dust & Illusions examines the evolution of the largest counter-culture festival in North America from the 1970s until today.

Using rare and unseen archival footage, including interviews of the founders, artists and participants, Dust & Illusions reveals long-forgotten events and memories of key participants that shaped and influenced the festival in powerful ways.

Bringing a critical perspective, Dust & Illusions analyses the development of culture, art and community as experienced by the participants of BURNING MAN.

Screening ONE night only!
Wednesday, December 15 · 9:00pm – 11:00pm
Location Kino Cinemas
45 Collins Street
Melbourne, Australia

View the Trailers here: http://dustandillusions.com/trailers

Third Dimension – Arts Project Australia #Melbourne

Terry Williams Not titled (green animal/man)
2010 ceramic
26 x 9 x 8.5cm

Third Dimension runs until – 27 November 2010
Arts Project Australia

A sensorial extravaganza, Third Dimension encourages people to engage with art through touch, sound and sight.

The exhibition invites us to consider alternative ways in which art can engage, excite and inspire.

Participating Artists
Alan Constable, Valerio Ciccone, Paul Hodges, Ruth Howard, Kate Knight, Chris Mason, Kaye McDonald, Cameron Noble, Jodie Noble, Tim Noble, Chris O`Brien, Lisa Reid, Rebecca Scibilia, and Terry Williams.

Curated by artsworkers Katie Jacobs and Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman.

Arts Project Australia is a not-for-profit organisation and has been promoting and developing the work of artists with an intellectual disability for 35 years.

Australia Day Film Competition – How would you capture the Reel Australia? #competition #film #geekgirl

Australia Day Film Competition
Entries Close: Friday December 3
www.aussievault.com.au

How would you capture the Reel Australia?

The Australia Day Council of NSW (ADCNSW) has launched the inaugural Reel Australia Short Film competition, giving short film enthusiasts across the country the opportunity to be recognised by telling the real Australian story through film.

Proudly supported by the Australian Film Institute (AFI), the ADCNSW is calling on all Australians to grab their video cameras, explore and share their interpretations of who we are as a nation in a two minute film.

“One of Australia’s favorite leisure activities is indeed attending the cinema and Reel Australia arrives amid exciting times as the global box office for this year’s Australian films pushes beyond $100m. We’ll be watching this competition closely, both for compelling reels about what it means to be Australian, but also of course for promising new talent!” says AFI CEO Damian Trewhella.

TWLOHA – To Write Love on Her Arms – Sept 25th #Australia #love #geekgirl

http://www.twloha.com.au

On the 25th of September, 2010 there will be an Australia-wide To Write Love On Her Arms Day.

What is To Write Love On Her Arms? (TWLOHA for short)

TWLOHA is a movement dedicated to helping the fight against depression, addiction, self-harm and suicide. A non-profit, non-commercial and non-religious. TWLOHA is people helping people, nothing more and nothing less.

What do I have to do?
Quite simply; write the word LOVE on your arm. That is all we ask of you. If you’d like to take a photo of it and post it to our group, we’d love that. We’d love you to tell your friends and family why you’ve written it there, and we’d love you to help them write love on their arms as well.

If you’re in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart or Launceston and wish to get more involved, then please seek out the TWLOHA representatives in your area.

Can I get more information?
Yes you can! Check out our website at http://www.twloha.com.au/, post a comment on the wall of this event or the TWLOHA Australia group, or email support@twloha.com.au

Wanna get involved, help us out, offer your services, or be in one of the groups on the ground? Let us know and we’ll help you out.

–

The vision is the possibility that your best days are ahead.

The vision is the possibility that we’re more loved than we’ll ever know.

The vision is hope, and hope is real.

You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story.

Remember; Love is the Movement.